Monday 15th May came with a very, very early start. With my taxi booked for 4.30am, I really needed an early night. Unfortunately though, sleep didn’t arrive, so it was a Laurie-shaped shadow that kissed a sleeping RJ, and crawled out the door, dragging a case behind me. With no traffic to slow us down, the cab made it to Wellington Airport in just 25mins....

Almost exactly three years ago, I signed a document that changed my life – the book deal for Science and the City. It marked the first step on the steepest learning curve I’ve been on to date. 2+ years of researching engineering topics, reading scientific papers and industry reports, visiting labs and construction sites, doing calculations,...

Hi all! If you’re new to this blog / my Twitter account, you might not know that I write about the science of cities for Forbes, usually 3-5 stories each month. Below, you’ll find summaries and links to each of my stories published in March and April 2017, but you can also view my entire portfolio here.
MARCH
A Volcano Erupts In Auckland…. In...

A group of Canadian researchers have investigated the optimal design for lightweight armour, using 3D printing and mechanical testing
If asked to suggest animals that use armour to protect their soft, squishy innards, you might think of the quills of a porcupine, the thick hide of a rhino, or the hard shell of a tortoise. But there is another class of natural...

Tunnels, that is.
Back in August, I met Catherine, co-founder of a new and utterly brilliant blog called ‘Women Are Boring‘, which shares fascinating research by women from all over the world. She wanted to interview me about my book just before my Dublin launch (you can read the interview here), and I’ve been a regular reader of the blog ever...

Right, (long overdue) Forbes update time! Below are intros and links to each of the stories I wrote for Forbes in January and February 2017. They’re a rather eclectic bunch, so I hope everyone will be able to find something in here especially for them!
JANUARY 2017
Reading The Road: How Will Driverless Cars Talk To Pedestrians?
It’s amazing how many...

An international consortium are using the world’s most popular soft drink to produce a host of carbon-based storage materials
With 1.9 billion servings sold per day worldwide, Coca Cola® is the most popular soft drink on the planet. But a consortium, led by scientists at Curtin University in Australia, haven’t been using their stockpile to quench their...

Hi everyone! In the last few weeks, I’ve had several comments from people who are growing increasingly frustrated by the autoplay-ads on the Forbes website, and so haven’t read my latest articles. Without exception, they’ve asked me why I don’t just post all of my stories on here instead. The truth is that (as I’ve mentioned in...

Korean researchers have developed an implantable supercapacitor that could be used to power future medical devices
Implantable devices aren’t new – pacemakers, which use electrical impulses to regulate the beating of a heart – have improved the quality of life for millions of people since the 1960s. But they can be rejected by a patient’s immune system,...

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve blogged – things have been rather busy since we arrived in New Zealand. I’ll post an update on general life stuff soon, but I thought you guys were especially overdue an update on all things work-related! As you might remember from this post, one of the things I’d hoped would happen in NZ was that...